Taken from the bands latest album ‘Kiss Off’, Directed by Håkan Göstas ‘Six Pack Of Champagne‘ is classic Punk n Roll from Sweden’s finest. Out on CD featuring a bonus track exclusive and soon to get its vinyl release ‘Kiss Off’ is the first full album from “Demons” in almost ten years.
After a recent chat with Mathias, he commented that there are plans afoot to release a new album in 2020 as well as getting their first unreleased album from 1995 out. It will at the very least see a digital release in 2020 which is exciting stuff.
The band is busy booking shows for next year which happens to be the bands 25th anniversary as well as some festivals and the Japan dates we’ll keep you up to date with the best punk roll band from Sweden at the following links –
Known for their incendiary live shows, Avalanche Party are a feral garage rock 5 piece from the North Yorkshire Moors. Cited by Radio 1 as “the most exciting rock ‘n’ roll band in the UK right now”, singer Jordan Bell and his band of miscreants have a lot to live up to with their debut album ’24 Carat Diamond Trephine’. Their raw, live energy is not at question here, the question is can they transfer that wild, untamed energy from the hot and sweaty UK clubs to record? Let’s drop the needle and turn it up to 11!
Opener ‘El Dorado’ lulls the listener into a false sense of security with its haunting vibes. It creates stark imagery in black and white with stabs of piano and understated harmonica, as singer Jordan Bell croons his lyrics softly, almost spoken word. This murder ballad is a more poetic and cinematic introduction to the album in pure Nick Cave/Warren Ellis style. As an opening track it works perfectly and much better in the context of an album than as a standalone track.
Let’s get one thing straight, this is not a party album, this is a dark and desolate trip, much like the cold and rugged terrain where Avalanche Party reside. Recorded in York last December, it has the ghost of close friend Dale Barklay (The Amazing Snakeheads/As It Moves frontman) all over it. Dale was a big influence on the band in the last few years of his life and his energy is kept alive here.
‘Bugzy’ and ‘7’ follow the opener in quick succession. The former is a 70’s inspired Doors/Stooges groover with added Avalanche eccentricities. The latter, a high octane blast of punk rock noise that captures the feel of an Avalanche Party gig to maximum effect.
‘Howl’ has 70’s glam vibes from the off with hand claps and cool as you like vocalisin’, coming on like early Bowie meets The Birthday Party. A great, anthemic chorus takes things up a level. It’s a good place to be.
Already, this is the sound of a band who are riding the crest of a wave. 5 years of constant touring, honing their craft in sweaty clubs and festival stages all over the world has seen Avalanche Party come of age; it truly feels like this is their time.
But while the melodies and refrains are instant and lasting, it is not an easy listen. This is an album of stark contrasts and sonically seductive moments. To go from the piano led ‘Hey Misdemeanour’ with its haunting female backing vocals and strings n’ things, to the relentless and unnerving ‘Playing Field Blues’ with its stabs of guitar, drums and wailing vocals, and to make it sound like it is just meant to be…this is something truly special and something their contemporaries cannot match.
Props to the rhythm section of Joe Bell (bass) and Kane Waterfield (drums), they absolutely kill it on this record. Falsetto vocals come to light throughout bringing an epic grandiose feel to the likes of ‘Cruel Madness’ and the trashy but pumping ‘Milk And Sunlight Is A Heavy Dream’.
If you were a new band and you had a song like ‘Rebel Forever’ in your arsenal, you would probably open the album with it, but with Avalanche Party you can expect the unexpected. They close the album in style with a song that can outdo Fontaines DC in the “who can sound like Joy Division the most” stakes, and they sign off with an absolute banger. High octane, edgy rock ‘n’ roll noise just the way we like it.
Most bands are at their best on their first album and spend the rest of their careers trying to reach the same dizzy heights. If this is Avalanche Party’s piece de resistance, then so be it. Its early days, but I feel whatever they do in the future, this will be go down in history as their ‘In Utero’, their very own ‘The Holy Bible’. ’24 Carat Diamond Trephine’ is Avalanche Party’s defining moment, and one of the best debut album of the year.
**Not guaranteed for delivery by Christmas, although most US customers should be OK***
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Cokie the Clown, Fat Mike’s alter ego, has now been elevated to Throbblehead status. This figure is limited to just 1000 hand-numbered units, stands at 7″ tall, and is made of a high-quality polyresin.
Re-creating the cover art from Cokie’s first full-length album “You’re Welcome,” this Throbblehead comes complete with noose, squirting flower, and clown shoes.
“Punk rock was never just music to me, it was my life,” says Cokie. “My parents were just relatives, my family was always NOFX.”
Just recently I had an email drop into my inbox highlighting a new single from the Young Gods and sending me into memory free fall all the way back to 1993 and a Young Gods performance on the Phoenix Festival main stage supporting a Mike Patten led Faith no More at the time they definitely piqued my interest but as is the want with festivals you see so many bands in such a short space of time things blur and the band slipped out of my consciousness,
The next time I came across the band was within an Interview of David Bowie in 1995, when he was asked whether NIN had influenced the creation of the Outside LP “His reply was that he was actually listening to a Swiss band at the time called The Young Gods, things came together and I re-tracked the band and was blown away by the first three LP’s The Young Gods, L’eau Rouge and T.V. Sky (which remains a fave up to today)
Franz, what can you tell us about the early days of The Young Gods? How did the band start out? What influenced the music?
We were born in the 60s and grew up during the 70s. Our first musical loves come from that period. Early psychedelism and later on punk, influenced us a lot.
We started the band in 1985 and at that time our main influences were Einstürzende Neubauten, Kraftwerk and postpunk. (Killing Joke, Wire, Gang of Four…) I think The Young Gods is a bit of all that: psychedelism with a punk energy. But the real thing that influenced us the most was the new technology of the time: the sampler. When affordable sampling devices came on the market, that totally changed my approach on writing music. No more chords, harmonies, E or A strings, just pure sound. A collage of sounds, that’s how you can call our music in the early days.
For someone hearing the Young Gods for the first time, how would you describe the music, and the way it’s developed from the early days to now?
To make it simple, I like to describe the band as “electronic rock music”. I think we used and abused the sampling technology until the mid-nineties and then felt the need to extend our sound with the help of other devices like synthesizers or computers plug-ins. I now play the guitar as well on stage, which is new. The music might be a bit less radical in its form but has kept the intensity of the early days.
Delving into your background Franz I’ve found you were a classically trained guitarist, but dropped the instrument in favour of a more experimental approach to music, utilizing technology, loops and beats, repetition et al did you find having such a structured? introduction to music help or hinder what you were trying to do with the Young Gods? How did it influence you?
Learning classical guitar made me consider music as ONE thing that evolves with time and technology. Every generation needs to find its own way and sound, but I was frustrated that my fellow punk friends were not interested in classical music and that the other musicians in my classical guitar class could not play a simple blues. Everything is so compartmented. If you follow classical music by the rule or punk music by the rule, you trap yourself into conservatism. Music is not about conservatism, it is about freedom and openmindedness. Music is here to unite us.
Tell us about the Young Gods Play Kurt Weill LP, what inspired your choices for the LP? “September Song” in particular really stood out for me, do you have a personal fave? What were you as a band getting across to a generation that potentially hadn’t heard Kurt Weill?
Again it is a will to make people aware of good music that had been written in the 30s /40s. For me the association of Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht is fantastic.
Take the “Three Penny Opera” for example. It is total counterculture: it is called an opera but there is no “bel canto”, people sing slightly out of tune, the music is dissonant, the story happens in a dark Soho where the heroes are gangsters, prostitutes, priests… It is political, subversive. No wonder these two where considered public enemies N°1 by the nazis. Weill and Brecht are the pioneers of “pop music”.
“September Song” comes from Weill’s period of exile. He flew to NYC to escape the Nazis. He then wrote for the Broadway theatres. Very intense songs, classics. September Song made me realize that one can be intense without having to scream…
Moving forward as a listener the sound you were creating seemed to become more sparse, allowing more space within the music, taking the listener on an internal journey, what was changing within the Young Gods?
I guess it is still a try to dive into sound and take the listener on a trip. With time we became less frontal. Age gives us a different energy. But it might be temporary as well !!! there is a lot to be angry about nowadays.
I remember reviewing Everybody Knows on its release calling it industrial with style and substance, how would you describe the LP?
‘Everybody Knows‘ was our first try to write music together (4 people at the time) improvising. We wanted to challenge ourselves, wanted to go out of the computer grid. With distance, it was a transitional album. It is very free and full of explorations.
Coming up to date you have a new LP out called Data Mirage Tangram, what can a new listener to the Young Gods expect? How would you describe it?
We are back as a trio but with a serious change of people. Al Comet and Vincent Hänni left the band in 2011 and Cesare Pizzi (who started the band with me) is back after being away for more than 20 years. It is more “downtempo” than usual, deeply psychedelic ( in its greek definition: revealing the psyche). You can listen to it like as a soundtrack to your dreams. It takes you to Amazonia, it has tribal elements, it sounds at times very urban, psychoacoustic, it warns you about the blind trust we put into algorithms and it is danceable!
Live we’ve got some dates coming up in the UK, what can the fans expect?
We mainly play the new album but include in the set a few “classics”.
Last thing Franz, what influences you at this moment in time? Are there any new and upcoming bands you could point us towards or any classics we need to re-explore?
Coming from your land: I like Farai and Perera Elsewhere. From France: the Psychotic Monks. And TM404, the Island people, The Oh Sees, the Viagra Boys, Clap Clap, Insalar. To be rediscovered: acoustic John Lee Hooker, Sun Ra (Nuclear War, Space is the place)
Thanks for taking the time out to chat with us
Thank you for your interest Nev
Franz it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to someone I’ve followed for so long
Brand new video from rejuvenated Zeros. Their first single is about to get released this December and to catch a quick glimpse of what to expect Heres the video for ‘In The Spotlight’
I’d still describe Clowns a new band but then they’ve been doing this hardcore rock n roll lark for six years which would hardly make them new really, it’s a tough one but one of the best records released this year without a doubt is ‘Nature / Nurture’ and its a great move on the face of it signing for Fat Wreck Chords. About eighteen months ago I stood in the Ballroom at Blackpool Winter Gardens in the early afternoon and watched Clowns own the day and turn in a pulverising and quite beautiful set and that was before we even had a sniff of the latest album (which, Incidently is their best by a country mile) and before that I’d seen them in one of the smallest stages of the festival a year or two before that where they’d just released ‘Bad Blood’ and that was a brutal – pulverising performance that made those present sit up and take notice of these Australian loons kicking the shit out of our ears with their punk rock. Wind forward to a cold November in Bristol as part of their jaunt around Europe in support of Nature/Nurture’ Clowns are in the motherfuckin’ house boys and girls and it’s a school night and the place – whilst not packed to the rafters is in decent shape and very busy indeed. Anyway rewind the evening a little and first up is three-piece Glug. Two ladies on guitar and Bass swapping vocals in the briefest of sets that was basically ten minutes and a bit but ten songs and plenty of between-song banter. they were never going to steal the show they knew it and we knew it but it was great to see them doing what they do on a school night.
Next up were the four-piece local lads The Broken Bones Gentleman’s Club. who to be fair have been around the block and are used to this kinda Monday night punk rock show as they proceeded to smash out their tight set of Hardcore punk rock for the next twenty-five minutes or so. Flip is a bundle of energy and turns the screw on the rest of the band as they get pushed harder and faster and tonight it really works. Cookie is our prowling the audience poking for a reaction and its working. Tonight The Broken Bones Gentleman’s Club are smashing it (as the kids say) as for what they played I couldn’t even begin to break it down as song titles were irrelevant. Maybe they played ‘Reasons’ maybe they didn’t but what mattered was tonight they were on form and took no prisoners and impressed those who’d bothered to turn up on time and give these punks the time of day. Great effort.
Finally, Clowns are ready as the busy venue is up for what is about to unfold and I’ve been looking forward to this since it was announced. Stevie has a sharp new haircut (since last time) and after a few stretches were ready to go and without any fanfare and ‘I Shaved My Legs For You’ is riffing the fuck out of the room and from the off this is going to be something special. Hanny J is a great foil for Stevie as they are both penned in by the dual riff maesters Rod and Will either side as they unleashing the venom. What a blistering opener, then it’s back to the rapid assault of ‘Infected’ off the uncompromising ‘Bad Blood’ album and that’s where they stayed for the title track and low and behold they open up ‘These Veins’ as well and the band sound on fire.
Next track up is ‘Freezing In The Sun’ which was released as a single prior to the last album but it only gave a slight glimpse into what was to come as the band took a giant leap sonically from the first two albums to ‘Lucid Again’ and then ‘Nature / Nurture’ where they seem to have really come of age and grown into something really special. Some of the songs steered them into Janes Addiction Territory (when Janes were on fire of course) and this single was their most accessible track to date and tonight it was pounding and they executed it to within an inch of perfection.
The band then flip-flopped between the most recent couple of albums with the pick of the tunes from both slotting in very nicely indeed. It took Williams a while to get into the audience but when he was comfortable he was like a cat on a hot tin roof not standing still for a second as the band hammered home the tunes giving him the space to do his thing and boy did he do it. ‘Like A Knife At A Gunfight’ grew into a swirling beast that it is but it was overshadowed by the monumental ‘, I Wanna Feel Again’ that showed how much this band has grown over their short tenure and all those shows are paying off because I wouldn’t want to be in a band and follow these on stage on this evidence. To suggest it was epic isn’t an understatement at all.
By the time we hit ‘Soul For Sale’ and a quick check of the time we knew we were reaching melting point in the set, the whole place was twitching at the very least as some lost their collective shit it was only ‘Never Enough’ to wrap up the evening. A fitting ending to a superb night of Hardcore entertainment from a band that was on fire and one I can’t recommend highly enough they were simply a sight to behold.
If you get the chance you really should check these Clowns out. It’s never too late to pick up one of the albums, hell even go for the first one that they sadly neglected this evening but I guess its fair that you can’t have everything. Now, these and Bronx on a doubleheader would be just the best idea if someone could make that happen in 2020 I’d be grateful. Clowns from Australia I salute you, you came – we saw – you rocked. Fuckin Awesome!
Idles release a new clip from their live album that’s coming out December 6th. Recorded at the famous Le Bataclan It’s Idles innit.
Finally rounding off the three new videos is this Amazing song from Jaz Coleman. Jaz celebrated musician, composer, producer, author, lecturer, traveller, philosopher, actor & Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres’ releases his new album on 29th November and it deserves your attention.
Recorded with Russia’s oldest orchestra, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, this stirring body of work taps into the more melodic, uplifting aspects of the KJ musical canon
Grave Pleasures have a new record out ‘Doomsday Roadburn’ out now on Svart Records and an audio-video is available which isn’t great to watch but you can pick it up Here. Whilst it’s a live album there were two songs recorded at the Moptherblood sessions which this is taken. So we’ve delved into the back catalogue and brought you this bad boy entitled ‘Mind Intruder’ Facebook
As the nights are getting longer you need more excuses to get up in the morning well, on that score we’re offering you a forth video this week and this one is taken from NYC’s MakeWar and its taken from their Debut Fat Wreck Chords album ‘Get It Together’ – the track is entitled – ‘Oh Brother’ – enjoy!
When ex This System Kills frontman Pig set up Drunken Marksman along with Southy on guitar, Weaver on bass and Loz on drums, who all previously plied their wares in Celtic punks The Guntys, on paper, it made for a very interesting collaboration indeed.
Would Pig suddenly be going all Flogging Molly on us I wonder? Well one’s things for sure from Classified Protest, through Rectify to TSK he’s always written about the social, political and environmental issues of the time and here with Drunken Marksmen, he’s bringing his rage bang up to date. That’s right I said, “rage” (as there’s none of the jiggy stuff here) and this band of musical marksmen really are his angriest sounding mob to date.
Recorded and mixed by the band at Kinkyfish Studio Abertillery, ‘Decline Of Mankind’ is the debut eight-track album from the guys and here I am holding a lovely coloured vinyl copy (which you too can own via the Bandcamp link at the bottom of this review).
Dropping the needle in the groove of side 1 ‘Proxy War’ and ‘Snapshots Of Britain’ both mix Motorhead/UK82 guitar riffage with Pig’s astute political observations hitting hard over catchy gang chant-a-long backing vocals. ‘Free Europe’ meanwhile whilst initially hinting at Southy’s Celtic guitar past suddenly zips off in a streetpunk direction that really is the business…ahem! Upping the hardcore stakes via the furious 2-minute blast that is ‘HypoCritic’ the band’s tight as hell rhythm section are tested like no other as side 1 is brought to a speedy climax.
Flipping ‘Decline Of Mankind’ over I have to admit I wasn’t really expecting what comes next with ‘Dance To The Apocalypse’ a throbbing slab of gothic punk that calls for “no more famine and no more wars” and sounds not unlike early Killing Joke albeit with Max Cavalera singing for them. Stunning stuff! The slightly more prescribed ‘Drunken Marksman’ is up next and this sprightly tune tells the tale of someone who has to be off their face just to get through the day, whilst the superb bass playing of Weaver makes a return to the intro of ‘Like A Disease’ a track once again returning to Pig’s Anarcho punk roots. ‘Decline Of Mankind’ comes to an end with ‘Default’ and this beast has more than just a hint of The Hip Priests when they fully let rip about it.
So, there we have it folks, ‘Decline Of Mankind’ is an album of 8 killer tunes recorded and released DIY punk rock stylee with the help of 4 independent record labels, pressed up on coloured vinyl and available to you for just £10 via the Bandcamp link below.
Tidy!
Boy Oh Boy. It’s always nice to have a few words off one of the Boys and with a couple of special shows coming up what better time to catch up with Matt and see what’s happening. Ticket details and links are below the interview for their Lewes and London shows along with the posters with all the details.
Hi Matt. The boys have been announced as headliners at Resolution Festival in the 100 Club this coming January. Having been two years since you headlined there was it an easy choice to say yes to doing it again? It is a great line up as well with Last Great Dreamers and Menace playing as well.
Hi Dom. We’re always happy to play at the 100 Club. It’s almost a New Year tradition for us to play there now. It will also be great to hook up again with special guests Last Great Dreamers who we shared a festival stage with in Norway last year.
It’s already announced as the bands only show in London for 2020 is that an easy decision to make with it being so early on in the year?
Not at all, we’re usually planning gigs a year or so ahead and there are only so many gigs we want to do per year in any particular city or country as we don’t want to overplay anywhere. But we are playing Brighton before the London gig as well as Rebellion in 2020 and there might also be one or two other gigs in the UK later next year.
London is an ever decreasing hotbed of Rock and Roll with venues and gentrification closing down places is it harder to find suitable places these days compared to when the Boys started?
Sadly, I think that’s the truth, which is why I have a soft spot for the 100 club as one of the few surviving venues in London that have been around since the beginning of British rock ’n’ roll. When we started out in 1976, there were probably 100+ small music venues and pubs in London where we could feasibly get gigs as a new band, I doubt there’s more than a handful now.
It seems like a whole new world out there for bands what with the internet being so instant and making the world a smaller place. Bands can record at home from anywhere is it a good or bad thing? there seems to be less chance of there being a community or movement like when you opened up your flat in Maida Vale. Have those kinds of days totally gone do you think?
The music business has always been changing. Other than live performance, income from music evolved from sales of sheet music to vinyl records, cassettes to CDs. and downloads to streaming. And even live performance evolved with the advent of music videos and once again with the arrival of the internet as well as audience smartphone recordings now all available online. The main problem now is that music is so easily available that it’s in danger of being taken for granted and devalued
Did you keep all the tapes from those recordings? Were there any particular people who impressed you who went on to great things in music that you could sense from the time?
I have some early Boys’ recordings that I’d mixed down to cassette but all the original multi-track tapes went missing at some point and I don’t know who took them. If someone had stolen them to sell on or release as a bootleg I think they would have resurfaced by now so either they were stolen to record over or maybe removed by one of the bands who didn’t want their embarrassing early efforts aired. Who knows?
Most of the people that hung out in Warrington Crescent went on to greater things, including non-musicians like Magenta Devine, but one person who did impress me was the new guitarist with Chelsea who had only just started playing. I showed him a few guitar licks and he picked them up so quickly I thought this boy’s going to be a great guitarist. His name was Billy Idol.
A little bird tells me that The Boys in 2019 have also been busy recording is there any details you could reveal about that?
All I can say is that we’ve started recording and it’s sounding good – but at the moment it’s just new tracks with as yet no specific end-use and we’ll work on them and possibly more tracks in the New Year.
Going back to playing the 100 Club. Its such an iconic venue for many reasons its steeped in history and one of the only remaining places still standing. How does it stack up playing the 100 Club in 2018 or 2020 compared to 40 years ago and which of the venues hold the best memories and why? The Roxy, Marquee club when it was on Wardour Street. I guess the Hope And Anchor which is also still standing. Wasn’t that the venue the band made their live debut? What do you remember about that?
Funnily enough, we never played the 100 club back in the day. I think after the first punk festival there when an audience member was hit by a thrown beer glass, they were a bit wary of booking punk bands for a while. Me, and I think Cas and John were in the audience for that gig. I also remember our debut at the Hope and Anchor shortly after, as it was such a relief to get our first gig safely under our belt after all the rehearsing. Mick Jones, Gene October and a lot of other fledgeling punk rockers were at the gig.
The Roxy was special because it was so short-lived. It was open only a couple of months but it that short time it gave punk its own home and helped to turn the UK music biz on its head and give the fledgeling punk bans the upper hand over the record companies, who were suddenly all desperate to sign a punk band. Also, venues, radio stations, recording studios, newspapers and music magazines were all forced to open up their minds to the punk phenomenon.
Re the Marquee, I saw so many great bands play there that it was a privilege for me to use the same stage and tiny dressing room. I’m still angry about the Marquee being lost forever after the developers promised there would still be a live music venue as part of the new development. I went to the opening of that ‘live music venue’ which was actually the basement area of a Conran restaurant. It was packed with tables and chairs for diners and had a tiny cabaret-style stage that you could just about fit a grand piano on. What really annoyed me was the ashtrays (you could smoke in restaurants back then), which were embossed with the names of some of the great bands such as Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones etc that had played the Marquee, implying that this was where they had played.
When I go there (Hope & Anchor that is) I don’t know why but I’m always slightly taken aback how small it is. Again its got a lot of attachment to some bands history like the Stranglers and The Damned playing there. The 100 club seems palatial in comparison.
Are there any plans to play further afield again in 2020? the USA shows went down well and I know bands and fans were thrilled with the experience of hearing you guys play live. What about china is that due for a return visit or are you now banned?
We are in talks about doing another South American tour and also Japan plus a few other things in the pipeline. I’d personally love to visit China again and tour there properly as we intended last time but it would be risky as we don’t know if we are still banned and probably wouldn’t know till we arrived there.
As for the band will John be playing the Resolution show? It would be great to see him up there with you guys.
As you probably know John hasn’t been well for a long time. He is showing signs of improving. It’s a slow process so we don’t know if he’ll be able to be at the show but we do hope so.
I live in Swansea and the local museum recently had an exhibition to celebrate 50 years as a city and 50 years of music in the city and low and behold there is a feature from the 70s of Circles night club down the marina with pictures of yourself from when the Boys played on a Monday night. With a great bill poster advertising the show. Do you have any memories of that show which was bootlegged and the first Bootleg I ever heard of the band. Sounded like an electric night in an infamous local venue. Were they good memories of getting in a van with the band and togging it around the UK in the late ’70s.
With these memories in mind would you ever consider penning an autobiography? The Boys history is an exceptional one and would make for a riveting read.
I’d like to have seen that exhibition. Do you have any photos of that feature? It was indeed great fun touring in the 70s because in many cases we were the first punk band that anyone had seen so it felt like we were trailblazing. As to an autobiography, no plans at present but if I get bored maybe.
Its been a good year for Justin Sullivan and his New Model Army. They’ve managed to capture the essence of what the band are all about in 2019 on the record ‘From Here’ and are playing to packed venues right across Europe promoting that very same record. Now I’ve seen the band live many times from festivals to small clubs and most venues in between but tonight I was really looking forward to what kind of set they were going to deliver.
On entering the venue I was reminded of my first foray as a young man into the belly of the beast that was a New Model Army show back in the early to mid ’80s, they rode the crest of a wave in the mid ’80s and dented the charts and it was where tonight began as the band appeared out of the clouds of smoke on stage to head straight into ‘No Rest’ which signalled some older men to start flinging themselves around the pit like time had stood still (something they might regret come the morning) . It was without pause we headed straight into the new record from there with the epic ‘Never Arriving’ that seemed like the perfect soundtrack as the wafts of dry ice cleared and the stage bathed in red the band’s silhouettes cast large on the backdrop as the opening new track from ‘From Here’ was received like a prodigal son.
With an immense back catalogue its always a treat to see what they will perform live as they smatter the set with “singles” it’s not nessasseraly the singles that are crowd favourites anyway. The NMA faithful are a rabid bunch who seem to love all the songs equally but deep down they’re probably like me and wish now and again that they’ll turn up to hear a run-through of all the singles in order of release followed by the best of the rest. Something that made me smile towards the end of the set when Justin announced that the band were quickly approaching their 40th anniversary and he might be persuaded to do a tour with that in mind but I’m not convinced and smiling as he said it he wasn’t even convincing himself, but we can certainly hope for it.
I digress. The new album is well represented with no less than eight songs being played. The band are a well-oiled machine and the songs are performed with much passion. Ceri Monger didn’t stop and his role is such an important part of the band as half of the rhythm section that really drives the sound on the more uptempo numbers something Justin has maintained throughout the bands existance and something thats such a big part of the sound.
We were treated to a blistering run through ’51st State’ which seems like it could have been written yesterday such is the stance at Westminster these days anyway I’ll try and keep politics out of this much like Sullivan did except to use his place to plead with the audience to do anything but vote Tory which went down well in south Wales even in these messed up times. New Model Army fans still know what’s right and wrong.
To put together a fluid setlist must be a tough call for Justin but we got ‘Believe It’ from ‘The Love of Hopeless Causes’ then to follow it up with the excellent new track ‘Where I Am’ was excellent then to dip back into ‘Eight’ for a run through ‘Wipeout’ wasn’t something I was expecting. The balance of the set was something that came across really well ‘winter’ was appropriate and ‘State Radio’ gave the pit a second wind. then surprisingly we dipped back into ‘The Love of Hopeless Causes’ for a couple more as we headed for the encore.
I was hoping for a couple of choice picks and I kept my fingers crossed for maybe ‘White Coats’ and ‘Stupid Questions’ or maybe some ‘Vengence’ but alas I got none. However, I did get a run-through a pretty impressive ‘125 mph’ so at least there was a few off ‘Thunder And Consolation’ as ‘Bodmin Pill’ brought the encore to an end but there was a second encore from a really vocal and appreciative crowd who called the band back for the oldest track in the set ‘Betcha’ to play out as we finally made our way out into the cold evening having been treated to an impressive set from one of the UK’s best alternative and still relevant live bands. Tonight the New Model Army were inspiring and uplifting and I can’t wait to do it all again next year after all a promise is a promise, Justin. See you down the front.
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